Can you believe that Slick Rick is still being hunted down by the INS?

I know I’m going old school here, but it’s a classic tale of the ignorance of the legal system. In many cases people are lumped into categories without regard for the specifics of a case. It’s word for word, line by line, no exceptions to the rule.

I’m generalizing too… because I’m really thinking of divorce settlements when I say that. Otherwise known as The Raping. That’s a story said, I’ll repeat it another time.

A story in the Village Voice “Slick Trouble” does a great job digging up the details of his case from start to the present.

My own little spin and summary..

Slick Rick’s contribution to hip-hop consists of one album, “The Great Adventures of Slick Rick” and one single, the Dougie Fresh collabo “La-Di-Da-Di.” The quality of those records are more than enough to get him a golden microphone on the Hip-Hop Walk of Fame. Doesn’t exist. Maybe they should section off a slice of concrete on Sedgwick and Cedar.

Beyond the music it was his eye patch, outrageous jewelry and swagger that let you know he was in the room. Busta Rhymes tried to recreate the thousand chain, rings on all fingers look last year, looking just foolish and out of character. When Slick Rick did it, he was at the top of a select few.

There were other people like Biz, Big Daddy Kane, Kool G Rap, Rakim’s crew, LL and drug dealers who had the money and balls to leave the house with that kind of metal around their neck.

But if there was a *bling* poster child for that era it was Slick Rick.

No one is invincible though, sizzling steak dropped in a cage of hungry wolves is gonna get snatched up.

Slick Rick decided to hire bodyguards to protect himself from stick-up kids.

“Living by myself, making records, and my name already being known all over the place, I felt I would need a little protection of some sort,” Slick Rick G-tag Ricky Walters testified at a later date.

One of those people was his cousin Mark Plummer. Ironically his cousin would be the one to cause him the most trouble. Plummer didn’t want a job, he wanted fast money and saw Slick Rick as the source. He started demanding extra cash and tossed threats. Slick Rick fired him, giving him $3000 in severance to calm his anger. That’s when the wolves bit.

One night outside a Bronx nightclub some guys walked up to him and said they “wanted him,” then proceeded to fire 20 shots at his jeep. Hitting Rick three times and sending his female passenger and a bystander to the hospital.

When released Rick bought a gun.. actually multiple guns, five of them, including a sawed-off shotgun. He carried at least one at all times. His friends thought he was overreacting and a little bit crazy.. meanwhile his cousin told him that he set up the ‘hit’ and that he wanted money. Slick Rick was being exorted. He said he was afraid to come out of his house, but one day he and his pregnant girlfriend went out to do some shopping.

After grabbing some Chinese food, they drove down White Plains Road in the Bronx, Rick saw his cousin coming out of a store and decided to end the bullshit. He pulled out a Davis .380 and popped 4 shots. Two missed and hit a bystander. Two hit his cousin in the leg.

Rick sped off, with police on his tail. He got on the Bronx River Parkway, misjudged a turn and crashed into a tree. It was a real-life scenario of his song “Children’s Story.”

A scenario that got him six months to 10 years in jail. He served two years and was released.

It looked like he would be able to breathe some life into his flattened rap career but Immigration came knocking. The British-born rapper was now a convicted criminal and under the law he had to go home for good. Kinda like.. what Naomi Campbell may face.

Like Naomi, Slick Rick is not exactly about to go on a killing spree.

Slick Rick overreacting or not, had reason to fear for his life.. he’d already been shot and pistol whipped, with the promise of more to come. He also served time for trying to care of it himself.

The INS didn’t care about any of that.. they saw him as a menace to the country.

Year after year, appeals were made and won, it was looking good for him. In 2003 a New York judge told him he could stay in the country. But INS officials pissed that they had lost the case so many times, dug deep for the fine-print on a legal rule that threw out the appeals of the New York court. They said he should be tried in Florida.. where they just happen to be more conservative and tough on these kinds of things.

16 Years Later…

Married and the owner of three homes in the Bronx. He awaits the Florida court’s decision. In the meantime he’s changing light bulbs, taking out the garbage, and making sure the hallways are clean in the buildings he owns.

“I play the landlord role,” he says. “I guess the hardest job is that sometimes, when a tenant moves out, you have to redo the entire apartment. Change the rugs, the sink, everything. That can cost a pretty penny. Sometimes you get bad tenants. Then you just have to follow the lease.”

Kinda of a sad decline from his flashy days. His wife describes him as “just above water with regards to celebrity.”

As far as music.. “I have a little studio in my apartment, and I dibble and dabble,” Rick says. “But when you get older in rap, you don’t want to talk about the same old stuff. You really don’t want to sound like somebody trying desperately to stay in the country all the time.”

Very soon he expects to be deported and told never to come back.

Not a thug or gangster. Just a well-known rapper trying to protect himself, however reckless it may have been. You really have to take that into consideration.

Oh yeah, that cousin.. he was never charged with anything, but a short time later he broke into someone’s house and raped a young boy.

The boy’s father put an end to his life.

Justice on one end. Injustice on the other.

“Do you see the logic now?”, Rick asks. “We’re talking about something that happened 16 years ago. I’ve spent more time fighting Immigration than my actual crime itself. I’ve spent more time in prison not for committing the crime but for fighting to stay in America.”

Like American Idol, it looks like Making the Band is going to be a regular thing. Da Band failed to reach their potential, whether due to Puff’s mohawk marathon diversions or the poor work habits they displayed on the show. To Puff’s credit he was able to make good with Danity Kane; they are a legitimate group, not Destiny’s Child level but the numbers say it all. Someone bought the 500k+ sold.

Who will be the next to blow?

Auditions for Making the Band 4 started this morning in Los Angeles and will continue through February, 6th.

The list of audition dates is below.

There was a recent article where Puff talked about his Myspace videos and YouTube this and that, he said if he paid attention to the web way back when, he would have changed the way he did some of his business.

An example of that thinking today may be the option for Making the Band 4 contestants that can’t make it to the auditions to upload videos to MTV’s site.

That’s a really good opportunity considering you can press record until the thing is just right. “Just right” is in the ear of the singer though.. American Idol proves that every year.

Yesterday afternoon DJ Drama’s Aphilliates Music Group office got a visit from the boys with legal firearms and bad donut habits. In this case, Atlanta’s Morrow County Sheriff’s Joint Vice Task Force and the Clayton County police. Police kicked in the door, handcuffs slapped on DJ Drama, his partner Don Cannon and 17 employees, 50,000 mixtapes were confiscated, computers and recording equipment, and to top it off the company’s assets were frozen.

The raid was executed on charges from a warrant filed under the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act. Which is a mouthful of lawyer speak to say they were selling mixtapes, a no-no in the eyes of the RIAA.

Theoretically it’s illegal to sell mixtapes (or download free music) because they primarily contain music that record labels haven’t approved for sale and don’t make money on… you know the story, or should.

Chief James Baker of the Morrow Police Department explained, “We have a partnership with a joint vice task force working pirated tapes in the country. We found an outlet in Morrow for the criminal sale of recorded material, breaking the OCGA, Official Code of Georgia Annotated, no. 16-8-60, which specifies that CDs must list the true name and address of their office, which these CDs didn’t, nor did they list copyright permission.”

“People were able to make purchases over the Internet and these guys sold the pirated discs for profit.”

Drama made his name from making mixtapes that were practically promotional albums for a specific artist and that artist participated on the mixtape, freestyling, giving him music, etc… the label execs knew exactly what was happening.

A DJ Drama mixtape is almost like a must-do thing for a new artist or an established one heading into an album release - that high-profile push to the streets.

His mixtape gold got him a deal with Asylum Records a subsidiary of WMG.

Big labels know who and what he does, that’s why he got the deal.

So his status in the game makes this arrest very strange.

There is some behind the scene stuff going on that maybe even interns don’t know.. *wink*

The story will unfold soon.

Till then the Free DJ Drama and Don Cannon campaign has begun. Luckily he has lawyers, online petitions don’t work. Really.. is this any more than a place to write comments?

This past Sunday Jamie Foxx was at the The Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City, NJ, a scheduled stop on his US music and comedy tour. Fantasia is the opening act for a number of the dates. With a ticket price of $225, $195, and $175, there had better be something more than Jamie and Fantasia recreating BET Award show tongue play.

No word if Jamie sang any of his songs, but he did reach back to his roots with plenty of jokes. With all the acting and videos you almost forget that’s where he started.. like even before Living Color, Eric was hitting the comedy circuit.

“Then they said we can’t use the word nigga anymore. That’s my shit. I need it. I need the word to describe certain things, because at a certain level of excitement, I need to tell you how the shit was, and there ain’t no other word that helps me say that better than that word.”

“White people, you can’t use it…”

That is the rule.

OJ got a little too..

“I threw a party in Miami, and he showed up at the party. He shook my hand hard as hell. He did it!”

“O.J. be everywhere, like he still in style, like he got a hot record album. He has no remorse and he crazy. He arrogant. What is he doing? Every black person is saying, ‘You already got away; don’t dance in the end zone!’ “

Saw Paris Hilton at a party..

“She was just falling down all over the place. And no NFL tackle around, just doing it on her own.”

“They say I sleep with everybody. So, I’m layin’ in bed with Oprah. I lean over to Gayle and say, ‘Don’t believe this shit. It’s just between us three!’ “

Angelina Jolie..

“You famous when you can just go over to another country and pick up some kids like you’re shopping for vegetables. I wish she was adopting when I was coming up. I would have breast-fed till I was 37.”

Jamie still got jokes. Here’s the remaining tour schedule in case you want to part ways with a buck - buck fifty.

Sitting at home on this MLK Jr. holiday there will be many people that watched the early morning version of The Tyra Banks Show. As a result of the popularity of America’s Next Top Model her talk show was created. The success of it allowed Tyra Banks to retire from modeling in 2005. She said it was to be more involved with the talk show, doing what she says is her life mission.. “uplifting women.”

Tyra Banks is in this month’s Vanity Fair magazine, they describe her as Oprah for the Internet Generation.

Can you get any more uplifting than that? Yeah, it’s the famous comparison.

I’d tell you to flip the channels between the two shows, check the girlfriend factor they both share with the audience, the young vs. mom age thing going on, all the other next Oprahs that didn’t sniff Tyra’s current success - $18 million in personal income last year, her Bankable Productions that has part-ownership in both shows, with more to come ( A Glamorous Life following what happens to Top Model losers after they go back to the day jobs) - that’s evidence enough that Tyra’s got the recipe for Oprah’s cookies.

“When I got this talk show,” she continued. “I was like, Oh my God, it’s going to be so much easier [to meet men] now because they’re going to see that I’m normal and goofy and fart, and so I’ll knock down that veneer of a supermodel.”

“Then there’s the Nighttime Tyra. The Nighttime Tyra is a character. A character that has been created over time.. I have a hit show, but that’s not me. That’s a character!”

She went on to talk about how she would talk to kicked off Top Model contestants for an hour after the show, giving them advice, making sure they weren’t ready to slit their wrists or anything. Her advisors told her to stop.. “we have therapists here for that.”

I think she’s a little of both: farting on your couch and the model turned wise fashion diva, doing whatever it takes to break bread.

Say What?...

Just watch unsung on tvone gone but not forgotten.. long live your soul!! mr. soul man himself.. love you bernie mac! you are greatly missed.my heart still goes out to your loving family. I aint scared of you mofo-er’s